Japan has plans to start building a supercomputer next year that can operate 73 times faster than the world's fastest supercomputer, according to Japanese government statements on Monday.

The American Blue Gene/L system supercomputer developed by IBM currently holds the title of the world's fastest. That machine is capable of 136.8 teraflops, or 136.8 trillion calculations per second, according to Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

Japan wants to develop a supercomputer that can operate at 10 petaflops, or 10
quadrillion calculations per second, which is 73 times faster than the Blue Gene.

Kyodo News reported that the total amount for the project is estimated between 80
billion and 100 billion yen ($714 million to $893 million) and the ministry will
request 10 billion yen ($89 million) for the next fiscal year's budget.

A formal decision on the project is expected by the end of August, but the
next-generation supercomputer is expected to be completed sometime in fiscal 2010, which ends in March 2011.

Japan's Earth Simulator supercomputer, introduced in 2002, had been the world's
fastest until 2004, when the IBM's Blue Gene took the title.

Currently, the Earth Simulator, at a speed of 35.9 teraflops, is ranked fourth
after the IBM's two Blue Gene systems and NASA's Columbia system, all in the
United States, according to the top 500 list of the world's fastest
supercomputers, released at the International Supercomputing Conference held in
June in Heidelberg, Germany.

The Earth Simulator is used to track global sea temperatures, rainfall and crustal
movement to predict natural disasters over the next few centuries.

The ministry wants to use the planned supercomputer for a wider use such as
simulating the formation of galaxy and the interactions between a medicine and the
human body.